10 Sales Job Interviewing Tips for Losers

1.) Tell company management how proud you are of not having killer instincts

2.) Discuss how your not the type to make a commitment

3.) Tell the sales manager that your not interested in earning more money or better still that you’ve no interest in money

4.) Tell interviewer how you kept the laptop of your last employer

5.) Lose control of your emotions and show anger

6.) Discuss how you have no interest in networking

7.) Make tons of excuses for lack of results

8.) Tell them how you really like working from home because you have other things to do

9.) Discuss how you trust all prospects to do what they tell you they will do

10.) Tell the sales manager about your lack of personal goals

Believe or not, I recently heard that a guy actually got a sales job by saying most of these things – who knew?

Start now and prepare for Q1

Do you know that the past two weeks and the next two are the best time to get appointments for Q1?

While many sales people are taking a break because they don’t want to do cold calling over the holidays, smart successful types are hitting the phones early in the AM and after 5 PM filling their pipelines for Q1. They know that many senior executives are available this time of the year and are willing to talk because they are ending Q4 and working on putting things in order for next year – so this is a great time for sales to hit the phones and get appointments.

Q4 – ARE YOU IN PAIN?

The sales managers pain is especially difficult in Q4 because s/he needs to make their numbers for the year – so deciphering if the prospect and the salesperson are on the same page is critical. Lots of sales people have “happy ears” and try to give them to the manager who in turn wants to give them to his/her manager. You know what “happy ears” are – they are the ones that keep hearing “Yes, I’ll get the deal and make my numbers”

Here are some examples of what salespeople hear that give them “happy ears”:

 

-“I’ll be taking your proposal to the executive meeting next week”

 

-“I’ll get back to you with an answer in a couple of weeks”

 

-“I presented your proposal to the committee and we’ll have a go by the end of the year”

 

-“I talked with the prospect and they love us, he’s just going to talk with his partner before he signs the contract”

 

-“This time he says they are signing and the check will be ready this week”

 

Been hearing any of this lately? Hope you did everything to avoid mistakes and are having a great Q4 – full of success!

 

Top 10 Surefire Ways For You To Blow A Deal

Here are some sure fire ways that sales people blow deals. These folks have developed their own sale methodology. See if you’ve met anyone who sells like this:

1.)Do not listen to the clients needs, tell the client/prospect what their needs are

2.)Make sure you don’t return phone calls and do not respond to a client/prospect request

3.)Be late for a meeting with prospect/client and make it worse by not apologizing

4.)Make sure your a know it all and don’t leave any room for questions

5.)Deliver a scripted message – be sure to make it worse by being low on energy

6.)Waste their time by not being prepared for the meeting

7.)Do not deliver on any promise that you make

8.) Tell them off if they complain

9.) Be very aggressive and arrogant if they don’t want to buy in the first meeting

10.) Rip the competition to shreds and tell the client/prospect that they are idiots for even thinking about buying from any other company

Sell with Happy/Sad Stories

Sounds simple enough but why don’t more sales professionals tell prospects about existing customers that overcame this or that problem with his/her products/services? Sure, they may mention that x company purchased xx but they don’t go into the various reasons with a story that has a beginning, a middle and an end.  I think the reason that some sales people don’t tell a good story is because they are not trained to do so and in some cases it is just plain lack of preparation.

While many companies have sales toolboxes for the sales team with success stories and case studies in it, some sales people will gloss over them and forget the story. Some ways a sales manager can help is to continually review one or two past and present wins at each sales meeting and correlate them to some existing pipeline opportunities. Have one of the team members who is good at story telling role play with another member and get a good flow going. Have everyone make comments. This will keep fresh in the teams minds the success stories and how to use them in different situations. In addition, you can have a customer focused technical type attend a sales meeting monthly to discuss difficult problems and how they helped win the deals. Since not all success stories are in the sales tool box, sales people can also do research on their own with technical teams prior to making a sales call or presentation to see if they worked on a similar vertical issue in the past and see how it was overcome.

Remember in sales people love stories if it’s relevant to their situation. If the story is a good one it will go a long way towards getting the prospect to want that to happen to them, if it’s a bad story they will want to make sure it does not happen to them.

Good selling!

 

Google’s new tool called “Knol”

Here’s a heads-up on a new tool from Google – it’s called “knol” and it will compete with Wikipedia communal encyclopaedia. It allows anyone to provide information about any and every topic.

You can now write about a subject that your knowledgeable about and add it with KNOL.
The knol pages will get search rankings to reflect their usefulness. Knols will also come with tools that readers can use to rate the information, add comments, suggest edits or additional content.

Revenue from any adverts on a knol page will be shared with its author.

Check it out!

Unavailable Managers

Some of the best managers I’ve met in my life have the ability of gaining loyalty because they are good listeners and are excellent at building coalitions that help them achieve their goals and yours. They know how to build relationships with both their internal and external constituencies and make themselves available when needed.

I say “available” because I frequently hear from sales professionals that their manager is “not available” or “the boss is incognito when needed”. You wonder how this can be, how does a manager get away with this behavior and keep the job? Some of the ways that they accomplish this is by traveling, being in meetings, delegating difficult issues to someone else that they can point to if the situation blows-up, and by not taking responsibility for anything. Surprisingly many managers go through their careers this way. When things get hot they just move to the next position.

If you have this type of manager you better be self-reliant, figure out how to get help from someone else or find a new job with a good manager. If you’re interviewing for a new job, make sure you find out in advance what your manager is like. Try interviewing them more than once. Also, check with others in the organization and see what they think about the manager. You can also talk with vendors, business partners and customers of the company that you plan to work for. Obviously, you will need to be careful how to word the questions but there are ways of doing this that will help you get the information you need.

Here are some questions you can ask the manager directly

Start out by asking: “Before we get started, may I ask you how why you joined this company”? This will disarm and implies that it is not part of the formal meeting. Continue moving the process forward with these questions:

-Who’s the best manager you ever worked for?

-What did you like about the way he/she managed you?

-What is your management style like?

-What are your expectations of how I should approach you regarding XXX?

-Besides making my numbers what do I need to do to have a good working relationship with you?

-What are the most important qualities you look for in a XXX and what do you think the most important qualities of a manager like yourself should be?

These are some ways of drilling down to get the details that you’ll need to say yes or no to your next sales job.

SALESFORCE.COM something good coming…

LISTEN UP SALES EXECUTIVES – Will you love tomorrow’s Salesforce.com news?

Salesforce.com will announce a new offering tomorrow called “Salesforce to Salesforce” (S2S). The service offering facilitates the sharing of data between companies that use Salesforce. There are a number of ways that businesses can benefit from the new service – for sales it will allow you to capture data, cross-pollinate for leads that can be distributed to your channel. Hopefully, they won’t make any of the mistakes that Facebook made with Beacon. S2S is a very different product, but coming just days after the negative backlash that Beacon received, Salesforce will have to make sure it’s PR firm works overtime on positivity and the differences.

In my opinion, this goes way beyond CRM and something that can drive revenue for Salesforce and it’s constituency. We will be hearing a lot more about in the coming months. I expect a number of SaaS providers will be watching Salesforce to see how well they do.

Let me know your thoughts!

 

IS FACEBOOK THE ONLY PROBLEM?

I don’t normally write posts outside my main subject but because I’ve experience in software associated with data collection, I thought I’d write on the current uproar over Facebook and the way they collect data with Beacon (Enables advertisers/customers to share the actions they take on your website with their Facebook friends). Companies have been collecting data on people and buying habits since advertising began and the data is collected in many different ways including on the Internet, it just happens that the Net is a great place to garner excellent data across many different places and the Net gets a lot of attention and it gets it quickly – so if you’re a big named company and your doing something wrong you are going to get noticed.

While many people are aware that data is being collected on them as they travel from site to site, they don’t know what is accumulated and cross-pollinated, sold and packaged for advertisers. Individuals do not know of the relationships that companies have with one another and how their data is shared. When they find out, they get angry – remember the privacy concerns back in 2000 with DoubleClick? Now just think about what would happen if the public was aware of the relationship that DoubleClick has today with many advertisers – just look at the one they have with Paypal – when you go to the Paypal site and hit the button for the Paypal plus credit card, you actually go to the DoubleClick web site. Now, if you use Paypal, ask yourself what kind of information about you they have – how’s everything sound to you? Not only do they know what you buy, but they have your bank account #, credit card #s, address, social security #, phone numbers, etc. etc, etc. - now put that together with DoubleClick and you have a WOW!!!!

The issue here is how companies go about collecting data.  The question is do you need to be sneaky about it or can you just ask for permission?

I was involved in one of the early personalization/privacy companies (YOUpowered) some years back and we recognized early that people were concerned about their privacy but if you asked for permission to get this data they frequently said yes. What a concept “Ask and you may receive” – just a thought.